


hunt me down

by Semjasa



Series: Ravenous [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: (white) torture, ANBU-ne, Betrayal, Espionage, Gen, Hurt, Identity, Interrogation, Mistrust, Otogakure no Sato (freeform), PTSD, kind of Orochimaru and the Lost Boys, the root of all evil gets uprooted, village founding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2019-11-15 02:50:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18065165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semjasa/pseuds/Semjasa
Summary: Orochimaru had learned to loathe rain during the second great war. He remembered he hadn’t cared much about rain when he was younger. But that rain in Ame had marked him. That damp cold, the moisture and soddenness. Their clothes never dried in those days. The blood on them, on their clothes, in their hair, on their skin was always wet, like freshly spilled. The dampness crept in his bones and refused to leave, even when they were able to light a fire.He hated the rain, since then. He had lost a friend to Rain. It had been absolutely bucketing down when he had to tell Tsunade about her brother’s death. And it had been raining that night Dan had died in Tsunade’s arms.It was ironical that it had been such a nice night, when Sen decided to ditch him.-- Continues exactly where "us and them" ends. I recommend to read at least the last chapter to catch up.





	1. desert

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Whitesnak3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whitesnak3/gifts).



> There is no update-schedule. I write whenever I’ve got time and muse. But be assured that this story will not be abandoned, regardless of how long it may take. The final chapter is already half-written (was actually the first I wrote for “hunt me down”), so there is no way that I won’t bring it to an end.
> 
> For Whitesnak3. Thank you so much for your encouraging comments!

 

 _Come as you are, as you were_  
_As I want you to be_  
_As a friend, as a friend_  
_As an known enemy_  
  
_And I swear that I don’t have a gun_  
_No, I don’t have a gun_  
 

Nirvana – Nevermind: Come as you are

 

  

[ˈdezət; _AmE_ ˈdezərt] _noun_ : wasteland, wilderness; _adjective_ : abandoned, desolate, waste  
[dɪˈzɜːt; _AmE_ dɪˈzɜːrt] _verb_ : to abandon, to betray, to forsake sb.; to renegade; to leave one’s duty or post (Mil)

 

They would be here at any moment now.

Sen turned around from the closed window and went back into the room to continue to prepare for her mission tomorrow. She counted the seconds. _One, two, three, four._ Reached for her bag, counted her _kunai_. _Five, six, seven, eight._ Checked on her medical supplies, tightened the straps of the bag. _21, 22, 23, 24._ Opened the small metal box, dented, the colour peeled off, and counted the various food pills she still had. _33, 34, 35._ Most of them she got from him. She picked one small blue pill and rolled it between her fingers in front of her eyes. She had been complaining about the tremendous exhaustion afflicting her after the effect of the soldier pills faded, like everyone else. It was after his first months in _ne_ when he pressed these pills into her hand, with a faint but proud smile. _49, 50, 51, 52._

The knock on her door.

Sen looked up from her supplies, put the bag on the couch table and crossed the room to her door. She glimpsed through the spy hole and opened the door.

“What is it?”

Two ANBU, a cat and a hawk, nearly similar in height and stature. She didn’t recognize them. “Katsura-san”, said the cat, “we need to have a look in here.”

“Sure”, she answered, voice calm and steady, “you do have the Hokage’s permission?”

The hawk showed her to document. Sen’s eyes flew above the lines down to the signature. Shimura Danzo on the Hokage’s order. She opened the door wider and stepped aside. “Come in.”

The two ANBU entered her flat and spread out, one of them heading for the only separated room—her bathroom—to check it, while the other walked along the length of the apartment. The cat stepped carefully on her wooden floor, checking for a false bottom, casted a glance in the wardrobe. She didn’t stop him. The hawk shook its head, when the ANBU left the bathroom. It didn’t take long to check every corner big enough to hide a full-grown person there. They seemed to communicate without words, with gestures and glances alone. “Thank you, Katsura-san. We’re done here. However, we have to inform you, that you don’t have permission to leave the village.”

“I’m leaving for a mission by daybreak.”

“You’re not. Your mission is cancelled.”

“May I see this order of the Hokage as well?”

“We don’t have it with us.”

Because it didn’t exist. “What a pity. I’m still going to plan my departure until you brought me the written order. Or I go speak with Hokage-sama myself.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Sen followed them to her door, and the moment she heard the klick of the lock, she turned around and went to the window to look down on the street. A white mask on the other side of the street, covered in darkness. She rose her hand and waved down, sure the ANBU was able to see her silhouette through the window. She went in the bathroom and closed the door behind her, turned on the water tap, before she climbed on top of the toilet pan, raised her hands and searched with her fingertips on the ceiling for the loose tile. She lifted it and shoved it aside, groped in the cavity for the box. She took it out and pushed the tile back in place.

Sen sat down on the floor and opened the box in her lap, browsed through the documents and files in it. Monetary transactions. Material logistics. Supply lists. Missing person reports. Waste management.

She rose to her feed, turned off the water and left the bathroom. She took on her uniform, flung a dark coat around her shoulders, which would disguise her silhouette outside in the dark and took her weapons. She took the documents in her hands, hesitated. She should seal them away, just in case. Better safe than sorry.

Sen went to her desk, dug through the drawers. She didn’t have many empty scrolls left. And she would need a lot of them before night’s end. Damn it.

She put the documents on the white, empty scroll and sealed them away, rolled it tightly, tuck it under her uniform sleeve and weighed the options for her escape. The window-way was impossible, and she was pretty sure ANBU observed her from adjacent apartments, hearing every step. It wouldn’t have been that difficult, if she knew whether she was dealing with the Hokage’s ANBU or _ne._

You were in situations more complicated than that, weren’t you?

Sen left her flat through the door and walked down the staircase, listening for any signs of another presence, while her hands started to form the signs. As soon as she left the building and felt the wide sky above, she clashed her hands and fingers together, realising a rush of chakra through her whole system.

It felt like being torn apart from the inside out the moment before the sensation for her body vanished and her senses expanded. Falling apart in feathers and far too many small bodies, blood rushing through little systems of flesh, featherlight bones and nerves, losing ground, swirling and spinning in multiple directions with one destination. The murder of crows chased above Konoha’s rooftops, crossing the village in an instant to arrive at her planned destination.

Her body formed herself again on the branch of a tree at the forest’s edge. She observed the house, pulling herself in the shadows. The lights were on. Figures moving behind the windows, and she could see two ANBU in front of the front door, another at the veranda door. Surely, more of them would be at the garden side, others in positions she couldn’t see, combing through the forest borders.

She clenched her jaw, examining the surroundings, the silhouettes behind the illuminated windows. Her fingers formed the signs and she rushed through the night sky, functioning, not thinking, not considering.

 

_"I would very appreciate some of your infamous spontaneity now, if you wouldn’t mind.”_

 

She landed soundlessly on the roof, sustaining herself with the tips of her fingers as the effect of the shapeshifting- _jutsu_ faded and left her with slight nausea and vertigo. Sen rose carefully from her crouching position and stepped to the window. She knocked her knuckles against it, before she slid it open and hopped in the room.

“Somehow, I have expected your visit, Katsura-san.”

“Hokage-sama.”

Sen shut the window close and stepped around the Hokage’s desk to stand in front of him. The old man sat in his chair, leaned back and chewed on his pipe. Sen considered him thoroughly and didn’t even hide her observing glance. The muscles of his visage were tense, his jaw strained, circles underneath his eyes, making his face even more furrowed. He looked exhausted. Old. Not broken, she noticed. Just so much tiered, thoughtful, perhaps regretful, though she might be imagining this. His eyes, although, were awfully clear. Keen as a sharpened _tanto._

“Are we pretending, that we both don’t know why you are here, or shall we talk clearly, Katsura-san?”

She huffed quietly. “I would appreciate that.”

Sarutobi pointed to a chair at the side of the room, and Sen dragged it in front of the Hokage’s desk to sit down. She sighed, feeling utterly tense and on edge, while she tugged at the scroll beneath her sleeve. “He was at my apartment.”

“Well. That doesn’t surprise me.”

“You’re surprised why I didn’t go with him?”

He closed his eyes for a second, a nod with his gaze alone. “I won’t ask, why you stayed. Instead I ask you, if you knew what he has done.”

Sen released the scroll and laid it in her lap. Sarutobi’s eyes followed her movement but slit immediately back in hers. He didn’t ask. They both had time. “Not more than presumptions.”

Sarutobi raised his eyebrows. “He never talked to you?”

“He talked with me about an offer he received a few years ago. He wanted to hear my opinion. After that, he made the decision to give me no further details. He held on tightly to the obligation of secrecy.”

“Obligation of secrecy.”

“Yes.”

Sarutobi emitted a veil of smoke from his lips, curling and dancing through the dim air. None of them lost sight of the other’s eyes, calmly, tense, all at once. Finally, Sarutobi opened one of his drawers and threw a thick file on top of his desk. “Open it.”

Sen hesitated and watched the Hokage curiously. She reached for the folder and pulled it in her lap, on top of her scroll. She undid the strand, which was wrapped around the folder to hold it close and flipped it open. Her sight wandered down. Sen turned the page, read. Saw the photographs. She didn’t dare to touch them.

“This is what we could seize in his laboratory near Konoha. At this moment a division of ANBU is at his house to back up everything else they can find.”

Sen looked at a picture of a human, she assumed. It didn’t make sense at first. Her mind would refuse to realize what she was looking at. Finally, she picked it up, with pointed fingertips. “And you have evidence, that he did it?”

“Oh yes. Undoubtedly.” He gave her another moment to skim through the file, before he cleared his throat to get back her attention. “And what did you bring for me?”

Sen laid the file aside and opened the storage scroll. With a quick hand sign and a bit chakra-infusion it revealed the folder she had been hiding over the last years. She closed her fingers gently around the cardboard. “When Orochimaru told me about the offer to run Science & Research in ANBU- _ne_ he also told me, that the offer came from Shimura-san himself. He told me about a few requests he had for Orochimaru in order to give him the job. It sounded—well, intricate. Stem cell research, restoring the _mokuton_ of Senju Hashirama. During our discussion he assured, that Shimura-san is acting with your permission.”

Sarutobi furrowed his brows. “I’m hearing that for the first time. If Orochimaru didn’t make this up, why shouldn’t he have talked to me about the matter, eventually?”

“Uhm, why should he? You weren’t his direct superior. Thinks had become awkward between you and Orochimaru, or that is at least what he said to me.”

“Katsura-san, I heard a lot of accusations and complaining about Shimura Danzo in the last years. No one ever was able to show me evidence, that his actions weren’t for the village’s best.”

Sen nodded. She understood. With a steady, calm hand she offered Sarutobi Hiruzen the folder. The Hokage put down his pipe and took the offered file. “What is this, Katsura-san?” He opened the folder and started to scan the papers with quick, trained glimpses.

“When Orochimaru told me, that he was going to work for Shimura, I got mistrustful. Not against Orochimaru but the man who had threatened me from the day I refused to join ANBU.” The Hokage glimpsed up from the papers. “I wanted something to blackmail him with, should it be necessary. I observed him over the last years. What you hold in your hands is all I found.”

Sen watched Sarutobi, while he read the papers, turned the pages, studied them with care. The rustling of the papers distracted her mind and she was able to think. Her thoughts dashed through her mind, chasing after another, rapping in her temples in the rhythm of her heartbeat. She was on autopilot. Hadn’t considered her actions from the moment she closed the window, just raw instinct, an instinct she had learned to trust. His words. She couldn’t push away his words.

 

_“I would very appreciate some of your infamous spontaneity now, if you wouldn’t mind.”_

 

He had been badly injured. She didn’t know what happened, he refused to explain anything.

 

_“You need to see a medic.”_

_“It wouldn’t be the wisest decision to go to the hospital at the moment.”_

“Could you explain some of the figures to me, Katsura-san?”

Sarutobi’s voice invaded her thoughts, interrupting the circle of her mind hunting after sense and teared her out of her paralysis. “Of course.”, her tongue flipped across her dry lips. Her mouth felt like sandpaper. “These are transactions made by persons linked to Shimura. I have marked the dates. If you may compare them, Hokage-sama, to the supply lists and material orders and give attention to exactly, _which_ supplies had been ordered—it isn’t hard to understand, that these are requirements for _ne_ : weaponry, armour, scrolls, explosive tags etc. Of special interest are the supplies obviously required from Science & Research. Now, take a look at these figures and at the dates of the missing person reports. Of course, the most people, who got missed, weren’t reported. I did some research by myself and talked with a few headmen of the circumjacent orphanages. Missing persons, especially children, occurred in just small amounts but far too regular. Always after there had been a greater transportation of trash removal according to my records.”

Sarutobi’s eyes were locked on the digits, columns and columns of horrible numbers, names and dates. His face got a slighter tone of white, and she fought, he might just look like her stomach was feeling. She laid one leg over the other in order to put some pressure against her abdomen.

“Since when…?”

“Five years, six months and twenty-three days.”

“And you didn’t report your observations, because…?”

“I didn’t have any evidence for what I saw. It could have been anything, until you showed me that file now. Although, there had been experiments on humans in Konoha before.”

“On prisoners of war, Sen! These had been citizens of Konoha!”

“Orphans don’t have citizenship. I know that.”

“As if this day wouldn’t be horrible enough, yet.”

Sen reached for the folder on the desk, opened it and took one of the photographs in her hand. She considered what she saw. Inhaled every detail, until her mind wasn’t any longer able to deny what she was seeing. Twisted limbs, far too small and fragile, shredded by something that looked like roots, growing from inside the corpse’s flesh, tearing the thorax. _At least, I would narcotize them._ Sen closed her eyes. She wished for the throbbing in her temples to stop.

“I’d like to make an offer, Hokage-sama.”

“I’m listening.”

She focused her glance once more in the old man’s eyes. She supposed they were looking both alike now, exhausted and regretful. “I made a mistake not to report my observations. I know that now. Since I’m the only person who knows Orochimaru enough to guess his intentions—I offer to follow him.”

“And I’m sure you’re not making this offer in order to desert as well.”

She huffed. “There are so many reasons why this would be bad idea, that I don’t know, where I should begin to explain.”

“If I would take your offer, how would you proceed.”

“Search his house. Look at every evidence you’ve seized so far. Follow his trace as soon as possible. Quickness is everything now.”

Sarutobi observed her for a moment longer, before he rose to his feet and left his desk in order to stand in front of the window. He laid his hands into each other on his back and looked down at the village. Sen stared at his back.

“Jiraiya is already after him.”

She cursed. “You have to call him off.”

“Why should I?”

“Because the oaf is far too emotional when it comes to his friends! He will destroy every track Orochimaru might have left behind. That reduces my chance for success by every minute!”

 

 _“Every second I’m wasting here, I lose advantage. And you’re detaining me with_ plans? _”_

 

He shrugged. He didn’t believe her at all, it seemed. Sen straightened herself for the moment, he would call for his ANBU to take her to T&I.

“A wise man once said, that the bonds between us are dangerous to the bonds of duty.”

“Senju Tobirama.”

Sarutobi glanced behind his shoulder. A smile tugged at his lips. “I’ve always thought otherwise. I believed, and I still do, that the bonds of friendship, of loyalty, of camaraderie are strengthening a village’s fundament.” He paused. “I truly believed the friendship to you would be enough to hold Orochimaru back.”

“In a perfect world, it might have been enough, Hokage-sama. But I also believe that I wasn’t always the best friend.”

He huffed, shrugged slightly and turned around to face her. “Who of us is?” He laid his hands on the backrest of his chair. “I’m very aware that you are one of my best spies and trackers, Katsura Sen. You haven’t disappointed me once, in two wars and during the time of peace. My only concerns are, that your feelings for him would distract you from your target.”

“I’m no Jiraiya”, she spitted with sheer disgust.

“I’m also very aware of that.”

“I’m not arrogant enough to say, that this isn’t bothering me, but I’m trained to put my feelings aside. Besides, I truly believe I have the best chance of finding him.”

“And to kill him?”

Sen tensed up. “No. I’m clearly not. I can hunt him, I can and will find him, but I’m not strong enough to compete with him. I’ll report his location and leave the execution to you—or whoever you think capable for it.”

“And you agree with my decision?”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“And still, you’re offering your services.”

“I don’t like it, yes, I hate it, but I also know, that he has to be stopped. Besides…”, she trailed off and took the photograph back in her hand. He looked at the details. Tried to make out, what she saw in the background. Every detail. “I feel betrayed. Personally.”

“Well then. You have my permission. I assign you with the hunt for Orochimaru.”

“I have to go to his house. And want to see the documents.”

“Granted.”

“And you have to remove the ANBU from Orochimaru’s house.”

“And why should I do that?”

Her eyes went cold. “Did you give the order to withdraw me from my mission tomorrow?”

“No, I surely didn’t.”

“I don’t trust anyone in ANBU. I can’t say who is in _ne_ and who stands under your direct command.”

Sarutobi nodded and sat down at his desk again. He took a brush and wrote an order.

“Enter!” The door swung open, and Sen turned on her seat to look at the six ANBU entering. “I command you to bring Shimura Danzo to me directly. Also, you’ll withdraw all units at Orochimaru’s house as soon as Katsura Sen arrives there. Furthermore, inform T&I that I wish for them to prepare everything for an interrogation. You hear?”

“ _Hai_ , Hokage-sama!”

Sarutobi stood up and handed over the orders to the operator, before he dismissed them. He turned to Sen, who rose from her seat. “You know the protocol.”

She nodded. “I can’t investigate alone, because of my relationship to my target.”

“At least for now. But I send someone with you, who you can trust in full.” His glance wandered to his side, and as Sen followed his eyes, she saw the ANBU in the door. Impressing. She hadn’t sensed him at all.

“Hatake Kakashi.” His appearance gave Sen a trembling feeling in her fingers, as she watched the boy with slightly widened eyes. He looked so much like Sakumo. “You will escort Katsura-san.”

“ _Hai_ , Hokage-sama.”

Kakashi turned to leave the office. Sen bowed in front of the Hokage, who dismissed her with a nod. She followed Kakashi out to the corridor, quickly taking lead. “Let’s hurry.”

They made it in no time to Orochimaru’s house. Her steps rushed across the old road towards the house, Kakashi close on her heels.

“Why are we running again?”

She ignored him, just focused on the task at hand. As they approached the open front door, the place in front of it was full with ANBU, and the very moment Sen stepped in the beam of light spreading from the open entrance, she was overshadowed by the silhouette approaching through the door. Sen paused and looked the stairs up into Danzo’s face, flanked by ANBU. Sen’s eyes flickered quickly to the side. She wasn’t entirely sure, but she hoped the masks over there were the same the Hokage despatched.

“Katsura-san.” The light framed his figure, didn’t allow her to catch his features. But she heard the amusement, the malice in his venom seeping voice. “How pleasant.” He stepped down the stairs, followed by ANBU, and from their composure she deemed they were taking him away. “It’s such a shame. But we all had always known that that friend of yours was a peculiar one. As they say: Birds of a feather flock together.”

It was in the very moment that Danzo intended to step passed her, without looking at her, when Sen was able to sense him, his scent infiltrating her sense of smell, and something snapped, triggered her mind, and before she knew it, she kicked against his crutch.

Danzo wasn’t prepared for that. Neither was anyone else. Kakashi stood there with huge eyes blazing above his mask. The very moment Danzo shifted his weight, the crutch went flying, slipped to the side, and Danzo fell forward, intercepting his fall—alas, alas! Where was justice in this world?—with his arm, before he could break his nose on the ground.

Sen felt approximation in her back, heard the whisper of Kakashi’s voice: “Why did you do that?”

“Someone had to.” She gave him credit for the calmness in his voice. Maybe she would start to like that boy someday.

ANBU were rushing around Danzo, who was immediately again on his legs, far too fast for her liking, but after all she had to concede to him, that he was still a _shinobi_. He whirled around, a second before the ANBU operative could get a hold on him, burning anger,  h a t e  in his one remaining eye, and his hand shot forward and grabbed Sen’s neck with the strength of a vice—and he felt the cool tip of a _kunai_ against his throat.

His fingers dug into her soft flesh and constricted her breathing, but the hold of the _kunai_ against his throat was unwavering, even then Sen fixated him through blurry eyes.

“ _You_ have made  t h i s  out of him.”, she hissed and lifted her chin, didn’t even struggle against his hold, stared challenging in his eye and pressed the blade just so much against his neck to let him feel the tension of his skin right before it was about to break. “You will pay for it.”

“I’m curious how you want to prove your accusations, obviously born from the guilty conscience of a whore, unable to hold back her toy boy!”

Sen screamed in his face, a roaring born from the depths of her chest, in bestial wrath, and even though she knew her _kunai_ was about to come to nothing, because there were already hands and arms tearing them both apart, while Danzo’s voice was still shrilling in her ears, she stabbed out, missing his throat ever so slightly. Strong arms yanked back hers and forced her to lower the blade, even when she still tried to get out of the hold to rush against Danzo.

The Older shook off the dust from his clothes, gazing her with disgust. “Look at that animal. Not a bit better than the traitor. The Hokage would do well to throw her into prison, before she is able to proof her deceit.”

“Shall I be the animal”, she snarled through gritted teeth, “so shall you be the monster, who led the children to the slaughter.”

 

_“I don’t have time. What is your answer?”_

Their eyes ensnarled into each other, all too aware of the gazes directed at them. These photographs. She was always able to tell herself, that he got along. That it wasn’t of her business. Didn’t touch her. Not. Her. Business. She had _known_ what he had been doing and had decided to forget it, to not think about it. She didn’t care about children, so shall they be dead! What had he done to her friend? What had she done?”

 

_“I need an answer, Sen.”_

And what had she done?

 

_“Sen! What is your answer?”_

 

What had she done in all these years to learn about what  e x a c t l y  it was, he was doing? She had done her research well, and through all her observations she had been painstakingly careful about to avoid Orochimaru: Wherever she had heard or read his name, she had looked away. Straight in the other direction.

 

_“Look at me, Sen, give me an answer! Sen!”_

“Sen?”

She blinked and looked down at Kakashi, who pulled at her sleeve. Sen looked up and saw Danzo, escorted by ANBU, leaving the area. She looked back at the house. Everyone had left.

“Sorry, ‘Kashi-kun.”, she whispered.

“It’s ok.” Well, to call him ‘Kashi-kun’ wasn’t ok, she could tell that from _that_ face. “Shall we go?”

Sen nodded and led the way. She walked up the stairs and entered the open front door. “Shit.” Her steps froze in the _genkan._ When she hurried to go on, she didn’t bother to take off her shoes. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

“Maa, that’s the reason, why we were in such a hurry?”

“You’re a little genius, Kakashi, aren’t you?”

The place was devastated. The content of all shelves was spread across the floor. Every book, every single sheet. The cushion of the couch and the chairs had been pulled out. Even some of the floorboards were lifted. Sen walked across the havoc to Orochimaru’s study. The _shoji_ stood open, and she didn’t have to look any further to know, that the ANBU had been concentrated on this room.

“What are we looking for?” Kakashi stood under the doorframe and watched Sen in the middle of the ravaged study.

“If there had been any evidence against someone else in ANBU- _ne_ , it will be gone by now.”, she muttered more to herself, before she turned to look at Kakashi. “A track. Anything that could give me a hint about where Orochimaru is going.”

Kakashi nodded and eyed the living room with a hint of exasperation. “I’ll do my best.”

Sen strode through the room, around scattered papers and books. She rummaged his drawers and shelves, looked in every corner, a bit unnerved that Hatake was staying true to his duty by keeping a careful eye on her. Mistrustful boy.

It broke her heart when she saw the _goban_ laying on the floor. She knelt down, opened one of the _goke_ and dived her fingers in the stones, feeling for anything. Nothing. She sat down at his desk, leaned back in the chair and took in the sight, which Orochimaru must’ve had when he was working here. She looked over the walls. Teared down papers and diagrams, hanging from the wall loosely. She looked down at the desk drawers, which were tossed to the floor. She reached for the big one, which had been under the table top. She turned it over, her fingers sliding above the wood, searching for anything. Nothing.

She put the drawer to the floor again and guided her hands in the empty drawer space and felt along the downside of the table top. Her fingers came across paper.

Carefully she released the corners from the wood and took it. It was an envelope. And in there, she found a photograph.

A man and woman. A happy, but calm smile on their lips and in their eyes. And she was utterly beautiful. So was the boy standing between them, a hand on his shoulder, a hand on the back of his head. In the background she registered the backyard of the house.

The photopaper was old and much-thumbed.

Sen inhaled the scent of it, of old memories, of hurt and comfort. She contemplated the picture and stroke with her thumb ever so slightly above the paper structure. She closed her eyes and laid the photograph on the table, upside down.

 

_“Ok. Listen. You need a plan.”_

She looked through the chaos surrounding her and spotted one of Orochimaru’s supply bags. She reached for it, pulled it in her lap and removed the _kunai_ and explosive tags. She found two storage scrolls, plane, and laid them on the desk in front of her.

Kakashi appeared in the door. “Uhm, Katsura-san? Does this house have an attic?”

She frowned. “Not that I know of. Why are you asking?”

“I found something interesting upstairs.”

 

_“I will come with you—but not right now.”_

_“What’s that supposed to mean?”_

 

Sen followed Kakashi upstairs, leading her through the corridor to a room she knew only too well. They walked into the guestroom and Kakashi pointed to the ceiling. “The roof isn’t flat. And the upper rooms here do have those planks at the ceiling. It might be decoration, but do you see the cracks? I think, there’s a hollow space behind them.”

“Wow”, she breathed and stared up. She had been here lying for days, staring at the ceiling and hadn’t recognized that? What kind of spy are you, Katsura? “More rooms?”

“Yeah. At least three have a ceiling like this.”

“There’s a broom closet at the end of the hall. Bring me a broom, Kakashi.”

Sen doffed her coat and let it fall to the floor, while she observed the cracks above her, finally reaching for the broom Kakashi was handing her over. She hit the broomstick with proper strength against the planks.

Kakashi, with his hands in his trouser bags, watched her, eyes fixed at the ceiling. “Did you find something in his study?”

“Kind of.” She worked herself along every single plank. “I can say for sure, that his flight wasn’t planned.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. There is personal stuff he wouldn’t have left behind if possible. That means he’s unprepared. Might have a fall-back plan in mind, but that’s it.”

Kakashi looked at her. “And what does that mean for the hunt?”

“He’s a man, who’s always prepared. As I know him, he has made up a few safety arrangements for an incident like that. But if he has been surprised, there is a big possibility, that he might not have been able to put them into operation. Although, Orochimaru is a master in improvisation, he hates that. That makes him more dangerous, perhaps overcautious—and therefore liable to make mistakes.” A plank cracked under her blows. “Bingo.”

She eyed Kakashi and the boy nodded, jumped up and wormed his way through the planks. “Oh, that’s cool!”

“You have found something?”

A plank sailed from the ceiling, beaten with much force and landed at her side on the floor. Sen let the broom fall and jumped up, took the presented helping hand and pulled herself through the gap in the ceiling.

It was dusty. Thick cover of grey on wood, the air old and fuggy. There stood cartons in the small space between rooftop and ceiling, a few, perhaps a dozen. Beams blockaded the place, but she was quite sure, that there was much more space beyond this.

“Kakashi, would you like to scan the other ceilings?”

The young ANBU had opened one of the cartons and brought some folders to light. Before he was inclined to follow her request, he was eager to skim through it, before he realized that you couldn’t make sense of the figures and thrusted it into Sen’s hands, before disappearing through the crack.

Sen set down cross-legged and began to read.

She wished she would have more time to go through all of this, but she hadn’t that time. Her eyes flew through pages and pages, scanned the lines and columns; notes, excerpts, copies, essays, and some of these _jutsus_ , he had been copied might’ve not been that accessible or legal, what could’ve been the reason for him to keep them up here. There were researches about physics of atoms and quanta, and the chakra system, theories about the destination of chakra after death, touching the thin grey line between science and esoterism. Most of these papers were dated about a decade ago, about the time when they met, in the end of the second war. But there was more. She found documentations, the death certificates of who might have been his parents. Graduation papers, old photographs, ideas for later projects, which made it never from sketch to reality.

And then there was a folder slightly thinner than the others of recent date. It seemed that Orochimaru had been serious about his plans for an independent village. She found notes and ideas about the topics he implied during their discussions, theories about individuality and their linking to the development of _Kekkei Genkai_ in the first state. Of course, he hadn’t been so kind to give an example, where he would’ve imagined to be a good garrison for this kind of hidden village.

Sen eyed the cartons and started to select a few certain files and rolled them together, before she tugged them under her shirt and sleeves. She climbed down and picked up her coat from the floor, wrapped herself in it. “Kakashi?”

“Still up here!”

She stepped in the corridor and walked to the room he was shouting from. “Anything interesting?”

“I don’t think so. It’s more…science stuff.”

“I have a look at his study again. When you’re ready, you can seal the cartons.”

“Hai.”

Sen walked down the stairs and back in the study, and pushed the _shoji_ shut. She laid the files on the desk, next to the bag and the scrolls, and started to go through the papers she had already looked through.

 

_“I will come with you—but not right now.”_

_“What’s that supposed to mean?”_

_“Obviously, thinks didn’t turn out the way you would’ve preferred to. Let me stay back, just for a few more days, to gather what you need and to cover your tracks. I’ll follow you as soon as I’m certain, no one will be able to chase us.”_

_“You’re hesitating.”_

_“I—no! I’m just trying to take as much advantage of this whole shit as possible! Because, one of us has to, right?”_

_“Every second I’m wasting here, I lose advantage. And you’re detaining me with_ plans? _”_

_“Are you serious? You need my help and you’re going to make a debate of principles out of this? You trust me, don’t you? Orochimaru?”_

 

She laid the papers meticulously on the plane paper of the storage scrolls and formed the seals. The piles and folders and objects vanished in dark, black ink, soaking into the material, drying in perfect signs and seals. She rolled them up and plugged them in the supply bag.

 

_“Do you trust me?”_

She walked to the window and shoved it upwards. Sen’s eyes scanned the outside, before she dropped the bag in the rosebush growing on the exterior wall.

 

 _“I’m not sure. Do_ you _trust_ me? _”_

She closed the window and walked into his bedroom, checked the mattress, the floor, but Danzo’s ANBU had already taken care of that.

 

_“I’m not sure.”_

 

She left the study, met with Kakashi in the living room. He looked up at her, an expression of boredom on his visible face, though his eyes betrayed him. “And now?”

“Now we’re going to seal the house. May you give report to the Hokage? I would prefer to leave soon.”

“Sure. What is your opinion?”

“As I told you: not planned, hurried escape. Personal items with a sentimental value still in place. Should there be in these cartons something of any interest for me, I would appreciate if the Hokage could give me a summery. I’m going to use one of my summons to give the Hokage my reports. He can use my messenger to give information back to me.” Kakashi nodded, tried to stay calm. She watched him attentively. “Anything you want to tell me?”

He sighed, running a hand through his messy hair, while he watched in any direction but in hers. “I let him escape.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had been with the division to stop him. We fought and he escaped.”

Sen’s eyes widened slightly. “Tell me everything you can. Any information could be important.”

“He attacked me and smashed my mask. There was a snake by his side, but I didn’t see that he had summoned it. It attacked him and there had been a trap in the snake’s mouth. It exploded and injured him, but… I just stood there.” He sighed exasperated and looked into Sen’s eyes, irritated with himself. “He was injured and confused. I could have taken him down, but the expression in his eyes, it—shocked me. Pretty pathetic, hm?”

“I don’t think so.”, she replied almost softly. “If we’re confronted with grief, pain and betrayal we feel sympathetic. That makes us alive.”

“I don’t want to be sympathetic with someone who did what he has done.”

“Understandable. But he isn’t just the things he did. He was a friend of your Dad, wasn’t he?” Kakashi looked aside, almost ashamed and hurt. Sen sighed and laid her hand on Kakashi’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Kakashi. Your Dad was a hero to me. I didn’t intend to compare him to Orochimaru.”

He nodded and turned slowly to head for the front door. Sen followed and turned off the lights.

Outside they sealed the front door.

“Take the windows there”, she ordered, “I take the porch and the backside of the house.”

“You’re leaving then?”

“Yes.”

“Good luck to you.”

“Thank you, Hatake Kakashi.”

She stepped over the old wooden veranda and did as she told him. Her fingers formed the seal on glass and wood. Sen walked down the stairs in the backyard and perched in front of the rosebush, shoving twigs aside, thorns cutting in her hands and scratching over the material of her coat. She pulled the bag out of the bush.

 

_“Do you know why you are such a good liar?”_

Sen shouldered the bag and walked through the garden to the fence and climbed over it, as she did countless times before. It was so dark, that she could hardly see her surroundings. But she knew them thoroughly, like her own home.

She didn’t look back to the old house on the old gravelled lane at the old forest’s border, which now laid in utter darkness. She walked away through the high grass behind the house and headed back to the village, through the dark.

 

_“Because you don’t ever say the truth.”_

 

* * *

 

_“Do you trust me?”_


	2. Birds of a feather

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s have a word on timelines.
> 
> When I sit down to write, I create a timeline for myself to get a feeling for the order in which the incidents occur. So, when I took a look at the timeline of Naruto after/ during Orochimaru’s desertion, I came across this:
> 
> Anko didn’t go with Orochimaru. No matter when she received the cursed seal in concreto, it wasn’t in Otogakure. Orochimaru still wears his Konoha-uniform and all that stuff. To create the cursed seal, Orochimaru needed Jūgo. To get Jūgo, there must have been an adult Kimimaro, at least not longer the little boy Orochimaru found back then. When Orochimaru found Kimimaru and took him with him, Kabuto was already at his side. So—when did Orochimaru collect all these kids and where did he hide them? In his basement?  
> (It’s getting even funnier if you have a closer look at the carriers of Anko and Kakashi. Fortunately, we don’t need those two for this story.)
> 
> What I want to say is that I won’t pay too much attention to the ‘correct’ timeline, because, in my opinion, there is no correct one to begin with. It seems that the writing never paid enough attention to take plot- and time holes into consideration—and so, who am I to do that? 
> 
> Having said that, please have fun with the chapter. One of my favourites makes his entrance.

She left _Konohagakure no Sato_ in the hour before sunrise.

Before that, of course, a couple of visits and last preparations had to be done, of which Kakashi didn’t need to know about. Her time-schedule was round about like this:

It must have been between 23.00 and midnight, when Orochimaru left her apartment. ANBU arrived in just a minute after his disappearance, so it might have been around midnight, give or take, when she left the Hokage’s office and arrived at Orochimaru’s house. Kakashi and her had searched for around an hour until they sealed every entrance and left. It must have been around 01.15 when she walked to the archive and claimed the documents the Hokage’s ANBU had gathered about Orochimaru’s experiments.

A copy of the report was handed over to her. A fucking copy.

Sen thanked, left the building and broke back in just fifteen minutes later.

She had been in this business too long not to know what a closed copy meant. She intended to have the  w h o l e  file, including every detail Sarutobi would like to keep away from her.

So, Sen broke in and exchanged the copy for the original, using the opportunity to sweep through every file and official order that included information about Orochimaru, limited to the date since he joined ANBU- _ne_. She searched for any document Danzō would have deposited in order to pass the whole guilt on Orochimaru. She gathered all papers referring to him and annihilated them. Needless to say, Danzō had done the very same with every piece of evidence that could’ve caused him trouble. That meant the files she had given to Sarutobi were the only credible evidences.

It wasn’t perfect, but still, she was quite proud of her work.

(Also, needless to say that she didn’t destroy everything compromising. After all, she was a notorious paranoid spy, sometimes not even trusting of her own crows, and she was sure a few papers more up her sleeve wouldn’t do any harm.)

Past 03.00 she was back in her flat and finished her preparations. She filled her remaining storage scrolls and listened through her opened window how too soon awoken villagers shared the newest gossip. It wasn’t every day that a _shinobi_ like Orochimaru from the _Densetsu no Sannin_ had gone rogue. And not every day Shimura Danzō was escorted to T&I. Arrested.

Shimura Danzō arrested. If nothing else, _this_ seemed worth dying for.

She smiled satisfied when she closed the window, set the lights off and left her flat, probably ad infinitum.

The world was melting grey in entire silence; a veil of fog as thin as a burial shroud laying above grey grass and hanging between thick treetops.

Sen knelt in front of the _Shinto_ shrine and lighted an incense stick on one of the small candles, glowing like the eyes of the death through the fog. She felt those of the two wooden _kitsune_ staring at her, guarding the shrine. She set down a small packet of precious spices on the offering plate, before she bent down and laid her forehead in the dewy grass.

She remembered the guards at the gates of Konoha, when she showed the Hokage’s permission to leave, and the disgust in their eyes. Funny how fast rumours were spreading. Then again, it wasn’t every day that a _shinobi_ like Orochimaru from the _Densetsu_ _no Sannin_ had gone rogue.

Her friendship to him had never been a secret. She had accompanied him to the library, had walked Konoha’s street at his side, had visited bars and teahouses with him on her trail. There had never been the necessity to hide her liaison with him. She never thought about how their relationship would be perceived.

_“Born from the guilty conscience of a whore not able to hold back her toy boy.”_

He might have thought about it. Orochimaru had always weighed all possibilities. And obviously, it hadn’t bothered him.

“Guide me. And I’ll give you his blood or mine.”

Sen unbent and looked Amaterasu in the eyes, before she rose to her feet, shouldered her bag and left the small cone of light and holy smoke to walk away in the grey morning.

 

* * *

 

It had been said, that Jiraiya had left the village to the west and she decided to follow him. It didn’t take her long to find his trail. There were broken twigs in the trees, which couldn’t have been left behind by animals. Abrasions at the bark of the larger branches, where his sandals had searched for hold. They had an advantage of around four, maximal five hours; and that made it quite unlikely that these were tracks from other _shinobi_. Sen stuck to Jiraiya’s trace, because he was basically tearing through the forest like a boar, in order to catch up with Orochimaru and—understandably—didn’t bother with covering his tracks.

The sun finally reached through the thick blanket of leaves, dispelling last morning’s fog. Sen landed softly on her feet on the grass between the huge roots of an old oak. She crouched down and examined what she saw.

The grass stalks were slightly weighed down, hardly visible if one didn’t look for it. She reached out and picked one single blade of grass, spinning it between her thumb and index finger. Brown on green. No sunspots. She scratched with her fingernail on it. Not completely dry but clotted enough that it lost his more recognizable red colour. Coagulated blood.

Sen watched her surroundings. A small clearing sheltered by close standing trees. She couldn’t find any pieces of cloth. She excluded that the tracks could be Jiraiya’s, because they were way too subtle. Now, let’s see:

There could be only one reason for him to take a break: to treat his injury. That left her with two possible scenarios: Orochimaru was that badly injured, that he had to pause, nevermind how close Jiraiya already was to him. The other possibility was, that Orochimaru had achieved enough distance between himself and his pursuer, that he could allow himself to rest a bit and care to his wound. That second scenario seemed more likely. If Orochimaru had been in a hurry or in greater pain, exhausted by bloodloss or already affected by an infection, she would be able to find more signs of an encampment of some sorts.

Sen rose to her feet and brushed off blades of grass and leaves from her trousers. If he was gaining speed, she had to bring the big guns in.

Sen straightened herself and loosened her fingers, before she bit down on her index finger. She performed the signs for the _Kuchiyose no Jutsu_ —Boar—Dog—Bird—Monkey—Ram—and slammed her hand down to the ground. Within the _jutsu-shiki_ appeared her little favourite.

“Sen-sama!”, Cora chirped. “Long time no see!”

“Just a week, sweetie.” Sen chuckled softly, stretching her arm for Cora to climb on it. “I need your help.”

“What do you need?”

“I’m tracking someone, and I could really use some more eyes and ears.”

The corvid skipped troubled on her arm while eying its surrounding. “Out here, krah?”

“Yeah, out here, in the forest. Is that a problem?” She raised an eyebrow.

“The village chickens are my homies.”

“Excuse me?”

“My flock.”, Cora replied deadpanned. “Crows and magpies nestling at humans’ places. Out here, that’s the territory of the big ones—ravens, rooks, jays. You’ll have to summon Rayko-sama for help.”

Sen flinched and sighed deeply. “Not that arrogant bastard.”

Cora cocked its head, croaking in agreement. “That’s going to be so nasty.”

“Tell me about it.”

Sen stood up and held her arm up in the air, and Cora flew off and up in the tree, sitting down on a lower branch to watch Sen, while she went through the hand signs again. She focused on concentrating more chakra this time, and again she pressed her hand with her still bleeding finger to the ground. Sen lifted her head when the sound of a dark and deep caw clawed through her and caused her bones to shiver.

Rayko sat in the tree in front of her, spreading its wings with the impressive wingspread of a full-grown albatross. Rustling, it folded its wings and stepped over the branch, cutting huge, midnight black claws in the old wood. The raven’s beak was long, shimmering black and sharp like a _kunai’s_ blade. His eyes, dark as carbon, opalescent in the day’s light did have that uncomfortable intelligence in them, too sharp for anyone’s liking. It stooped and ground his pecker at the branch’s wood, loosened splinters falling to the ground, before the raven looked down on her.

“What do you want, Sen?”

No greetings, not even some kind of honorific or at least a minimisation? We must have had a really bad day. Sen buried her hands inside her coat pockets and tried her hardest to show all coolness she was able to bring up. “Your help, Rayko.”

The raven cocked its head and watched her attentively, too much cunning in these eyes, malice and mockery. “Whoever wants help has to pay.” Its voice was dark, raspy, like sandpaper scratching above stone. Its talons clawed deeply in the branch’s wood, releasing resin between its claws like blood. “What help do you want?”

“I am hunting the snake summoner Orochimaru.” Sen sensed Cora getting twitchy on its twig, but she ignored it for the moment. “He is followed by the toad sage Jiraiya. I want your help to chase them down.”

Rayko croaked and it sounded like a wicked laugh. “Two elite _shinobi_ to hunt will cost a decent price, Sen.”

“Then name the price, Rayko.”

The old raven looked her over. “An eye.”

“What?!”

“One of your eyes, Sen. That’s my price.”

“No.”

“Good. Then your left hand.”

“Bullshit, Rayko!”

The raven made a gesture with its wings like it shrugged. Sen huffed and walked away, right under the branch Rayko was sitting on.

“Fine! I’ll do it myself, then. And Cora will get the lamb.”

Rayko jumped around on the branch to look after her, cocking his head in curiosity. “What lamb?”

Sen stopped, not turning around to hide her smile. Corvids were such impressive and intelligent creatures, yet so predictable. Sen shrugged, while she turned around to look up to Rayko, an unconcerned expression on her face. “The lamb I was going to offer for your help.”

Rayko laughed croaky. “You think one lamb is enough to satisfy me and my brothers and sisters? Ten lambs.”

“One.”

“Ten.”

“Two.”

“Ten.”

“Three. And that’s it! Paid after the mission’s completion.”

“Three”, Rayko agreed, “and a bite of your own flesh.”

Sen tensed and Cora got even more twitchy. “What do you mean?”

“As I say. Blood for blood. We will have a contract, the two of us. Me and my brothers and sisters will search all the elemental nations for the snake and the toad, until their blood wets your hands—or whatever you want from them. I don’t care. Eat them, if you like. But to seal our contract, I will eat from your flesh and drink from your blood. You will become part of my flock.”

Sen felt unsure and glanced at Cora. “Will it in any way affect my relationship to Cora?”

“No. We belong to the same realm. The bond between summoner and summon will not be affected.”

Sen hesitated. Then she doffed her fingerless glove, baring her left hand. She turned up her palm and offered it to the raven. Rayko spread its wings and raised with one single flap, flew down to her and before she could straighten herself, beat its beak deep in her hand, its claws clutching around her arm for support, blade sharp horn breaking through skin and flesh, tearing at it—and before Sen could even cry out in pain, Rayko flew off, landing again on the branch, and Sen watched with horror as the raven laid back its head to devour the piece of flesh in its beak.

Sen stared down at her hand, blood pouring from the open wound in her palm and then again at the raven’s bloody pecker. “Are we done now?”, she hissed, ignoring the pain chasing through her whole hand as best as she could.

“Now we begin, Sen.” Rayko lifted its head and screamed with loud, screeching caws, reverberating through the forest’s treetops, buffeted about clearings and the depths of the wood.

Sen turned around as she heard a sound rising from the forest’s depths, not from a single direction, rather from all around her. She looked up in the sky between twigs and leaves; there were just a few at first, but fast increasing, at last countless corvids circling the sky, flying down with loud croaking, chasing through the trees, circling her in such speed, she could feel her hair blowing in the wind because of their strokes of wings.

Rayko leaped up and disappeared within the dark bodies, and they darted off between the trees, scattered to the four winds.

Sen allowed herself to relax, grasped her wrist with her other hand and looked down at the problem. “Shit! Stupid birdbrained bastard!”

“How bad is it, Sen-sama?” Cora flew over to her and landed on her shoulder. Sen held up her hand. “Get an eyeful of this shit.”

Sen rummaged in her bag and set down in the grass, throwing her medical supply kit in front of her. With just one hand there wasn’t much left for fine tuning, and when she poured the disinfectant over her raw flesh, she screamed in pain and rage. Cursing under her breath, she treated the wound and wrapped it in bandages with a little assistance from Cora’s carefully placed claws.

“I don’t want to push…”, the corvid trailed.

“Then, don’t do it?”

Cora stalked through the high grass and watched Sen put the supplies back in her bag, cautious to not strain her left hand. “But I’m so curious, krah! What happened, what happened, krah, krah?”

Sen shouldered her bag, still sitting on the ground, watching the crow as it jumped on her knee. “Orochimaru defected. I’m tasked to find him.”

Cora cocked its head. “More details, please?”

“Later. I have to move now.”

Sen hit the trail again. The day was melting gold beyond heavy leaves. It had been a hot summer day, the cicadas singing sheer deafening in the muggy afternoon. The air was comfortable under the trees. Sen was able to pick up an appropriate speed, following every single trace belonging to the two of the Sannin in front of her.

Sen paused on a clearing and took a gulp from her flask, when a raven landed in front of her on the lower branches of a tree. It wasn’t one of her personal summons, but she recognized the bird belonging to Rayko’s flight.

“Do you have something for me?”

“Krah-ya. There’s a ninja not far from you. Five hundred feet southeast from your position.”

“What does he look like?”

“Wretched. White hair.”

Sen smiled calmly. It seemed as if this problem had been solved by itself. “Thank you, darling.” She stowed away the flask and set off running, sent herself up a tree with enough chakra control to hike up and chased in the direction the raven had given her. Sen couldn’t claim to be a chakra-sensor, but she had trained her perception to a remarkable extent and was eventually able to sense Jiraiya’s exact position while approaching him.

Sen landed between the trees on the ground, perched slightly to cushion the fall and looked at the figure that sank down at one tree’s foot. Jiraiya lowered the _kunai_ in his hand as he recognized her, his broad shoulders lifting and lowering under his heavy breath. She saw blood on his right shoulder and side. “Looks like everything is going smoothly so far.”

“You can say that again.”

Sen approached and crouched down in front of him, observing his injuries. Nothing lethal, as far as she could tell. “Would you mind bringing me up to date?”

“There isn’t much left to say.”, he replied hoarsely, watching her, while she shoved a few of her medical supplies in his hand. The idiot hadn’t left Konoha prepared, of course. “I caught up with him. I tried to talk. He didn’t listen. We fought. He won. End of story.”

“Are you able to go back?”

“Yes. I’m just having a small nap. Why are you here?”

“The Hokage gave me the order to follow him.”

“Hm”, he mused, “that makes sense. You’re going to bring him back, right?”

She shrugged, while she watched him swallowing a few painkillers. “There are only two possibilities, Jiraiya. Either I bring him back or he kills me.”

“There’s a third”, he replied, with the slightest hint of a growl.

“And what would that be?”

“You could go with him.”

“I’d never betray my village.” She wasn’t surprised how easily the lie slipped her lips. _“Do you know, why you are such a good liar? Because you don’t ever say the truth.”_ Surprising about it was, that she recognized it as a lie. Usually, she didn’t pay attention to her own intentions—that makes it so much easier to hide them and go through interrogations. She hadn’t made up her mind, yet. No decisions set. She left all doors open, always, and so as well the possibility to seize the hand _he_ was offering her instead of slapping it away.

Jiraiya didn’t see the lie. He didn’t know her well enough, wasn’t able to look behind her masks. He believed her, like Orochimaru did, once, when she told him, she would never leave him. “He loves you, Sen.”

She snorted. “Neither Orochimaru nor I are capable to love.”

“Why do you say that?”

“We have seen too many things. _Done_ things. Love is a concept, capable for those not looking through this disguise called ‘life’.”

“I saw the same things.”

“Yes, you did. But your eyes are different, toad sage.” She forced her gaze into his eyes, hard and merciless. “Your eyes can’t see the world as mine do. And I can’t see the world through Orochimaru’s, but at least I can imagine, and he, since our eyes hold the same nature, might catch a glimpse of how I see the world. And because of that, he is able to understand my decisions and my view on things. No one else can. And so do I for him. We don’t see the same things, Jiraiya. Our eyes are not compatible.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “And you wouldn’t call that love?”

“No.”, she responded with certainty. “Love is a much too pathetic and simple concept to express what the two of us share.”

   “ _Born from the guilty conscience of a whore not able to hold back her toy boy.”_

Sen clenched her jaw and rose to her feet, avoiding Jiraiya’s eyes. “Were did he go?”

Jiraiya nodded his head in the direction. “He left eastbound.”

Sen looked in the shown direction, thoughtfully. Of course, Orochimaru didn’t go east. That must’ve been a false track for Jiraiya. Go east would mean to be surrounded by the sea and Konoha’s borders in the west. Sen guessed his preferred direction would be south, maybe tea-country, but she wasn’t the only one, who knew about his fondness for warmth and good tea. If she would’ve been in his position, she would’ve gone west. Leaving Konoha in her back, able to flee as far as it was necessary, through the borders of many countries, until even Konoha’s arm wouldn’t be long enough to catch her.

“I’ll try to come back soon, Jiraiya.

“Good luck, Sen.”

She left the place and disappeared into the forest’s shadows. She walked a while eastward, until she could be sure that Jiraiya wouldn’t be able to sense or follow her any longer and turned to leave the path he had shown her. She couldn’t go straight to the west; that would bring her back to Konoha. More country borders laid in the north—Frost, Rice, Iron, Rain, Earth—, going south would mean, Orochimaru would have to cross the whole length of Fire Country to reach at least the borders of Wind Country. So, Sen turned to the northwest.

She followed through the night, without any sign that she was catching up. He had hidden his tracks carefully. Weighed down grass here and there. Sometimes a snapped twig in the trees. It seemed he was changing between the ‘way of the ninja’ through the trees and walking across the ground. The only evidence that she wasn’t merely hunting squirrels was a single black hair one of the ravens brought her. She twisted it between her fingers and sighed in relief. She was on the right track. Time to use Cora.

“You must carry a message to the Hokage.” She held up a thin piece of paper, rolled up tightly. The crow jumped on a small branch, pleased with it moving up and down.

“Do you tell me, what you’re up to?”

“I’m going west, and you will confirm to Sarutobi that I go east.”

It cocked its head. “Why?”

“It’s impossible that Orochimaru is going eastwards. Or south. That’s not like him. But I don’t want anyone to know, where I’m going. So, make sure to fly in a big curve and come to Konoha from the east.”

“But, Sen, if you say it’s obvious that he isn’t there, won’t the Hokage think the same and wonder, why you would have gone to the east?”

She froze, staring in front of her. “No. I don’t think he will. After all, he has lost his knowledge about his former students. He didn’t recognize anything about Orochimaru in the past years.”

“Sen”, Cora said, nearly whispering. “You are making mistakes.” And the corvid was right. It was an assumption she was relying on. And it frightened the summon, and Sen, too.

“What will you do, if you stand in front of him. You are not planning to defect with him, are you?”

“Well, that depends on his reaction towards me.”

“You don’t have a plan?” The crow sounded flabbergasted.

“ _Of course,_ I do have a plan. A lot of them are running through my mind right now, but it _depends on the situation_.”

“Then tell me. What’s the plan, Sen-sama?”

“Well, if he’s going to attack me, of course I’m going to say that I’m here to go with him, just as I promised in Konoha.”

“Why, by all means, should he attack you? That doesn’t make sense. You’re his friend!”

“Because he’s hurt, in more than just one way, hunted, exhausted and betrayed.”

The crow declined its head again to the side as if it didn’t really understand her point.

“Oh, Cora, think like a human for once! See, if you’re picking at a snake one time too often, even if it never attacked you before, don’t you think it will strike at you immediately in the moment, it sees the shadow of your pecker between the leaves?”

The crow nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense, krah-yah.”

“I’m glad you agree.”

“But then, you would approach the snake with your whole flock and pick it dead, before it can kill you.”

Sen raised her eyebrows. “That’s not an option.”

Cora made a movement with its wings like a shrug and flew down to her to snap the message out of her hand. It circled around the trees and flew up, disappearing in the sky.

It was just after that when one of Rayko’s ravens landed on the ground in front of her. “We found something, Sen.”

 

* * *

 

Splintered glass scrunched under her boots and ashes swirled up beneath her steps, burnt papers crumbling to dust. The thick scent of smoke, fire and burning chemicals still hung in the air.

The walls and ceilings were fireproof but blackened with soot; the furniture hadn’t been that lucky. The shelves made of metal were deformed or just crumbled to waste, molten under blazing heat. The entrance had been hidden behind thick bushes and low hanging twigs. The ravens might have overlooked it if not for the scent of smoke in the air.

There was a workbench still standing in the gutted laboratory. She approached it, her fingers stroking above burnt documents, falling to dust under her fingertips.

That in general was a quite efficient method to annihilate evidence.

The walls radiated still some warmth when she touched it, and the smell was strong, too, so she guessed the fire died out no longer than 24 hours ago. She couldn’t guess how long it had been burning. She was a girl with a lot of talents, as Orochimaru liked to state, but incendiary wasn’t one of her fields of expertise.

—Having said this, why actually not? While she looked around, it dawned to her, that she might have overseen a quite useful skill in her CV—

Sen glanced through the room one last time, ready to leave, not wiser than before, though with the confident to follow the right track, and stopped. Her eyes fell upon the wall on the other side of the laboratory, on a kind of board, utterly carbonised—, she didn’t have any idea why it was still hanging on the wall—and in the middle of it hung a photograph, unspoilt.

“What the hell”, she murmured and went over, eyed it cautiously without touching it. It was a picture of her. Sen narrowed her eyes, tried to put together what she was seeing. It was somewhere in Konoha, she could tell from what she saw of the street in the background, herself sitting at a table, a bowl with rice in front of her, eating, with an annoyed glance in the photographer’s direction. She dimly remembered that day; she had got lunch with a colleague, Yamashiro Aoba, a crow summoner like herself, and he had that silly camera with him. She had no idea that or _how_ Orochimaru had gotten this picture. It wasn’t even a flattering one. Why should he leave that photograph?

It couldn’t be a hint to his stay, since the shot showed Konoha. It couldn’t refer to the photographer, because Orochimaru never had anything to do with Aoba. She didn’t wear anything special, just her uniform. And she ate rice.

Rice.

_Ta no Kuni—_ the Land of Rice Paddies.

Could it be that simple? It could be a red herring. It depended entirely on if he was still hoping for her to follow, or if he already considered her as an enemy. If he thought only her capable to follow him this far, or if it was a distraction for any other hunter on his trail.

Sen took the photo and disrupted it in small pieces, screwed them in her hands, while she already turned to leave the underground base, tucked the pieces in her mouth and swallowed hard. She grimaced. Disgusting.

But a similarly effective annihilation of evidence.

 

* * *

 

Kabuto thrummed his pencil on the desk, irritated and annoyed. The data didn’t make sense at all, not a particle; but he would figure it out, somehow.

He sighed and leaned his head back in his neck in order to stare at the ceiling of the underground laboratory. Orochimaru had promised that no one in ANBU- _ne_ knew about this place, not even Danzō. That he was safe here. Kabuto trusted him. His stomach sometimes still tried to tell him otherwise, but he trusted him. There had been enough possibilities for Orochimaru to stab him in the back and he didn’t do it. Even when he just sat on his hunkers like now, totally useless, he didn’t turn against him.

 

_“Just lay low for a while. They must believe you’re dead. Better yet, they forget you’ve ever existed.”_

Kabuto hated to think about the last months. He liked his confidence, his ability to adapt to every situation. He locked his feelings so far away, he didn’t even know which emotions were his and which were his role’s. But _this…_ the awareness. It had shaken him to the bones.

 

_“You’ll be safe here. I’ll check up on you every few weeks. You know how to create a safety-seal?”_

_“No, Orochimaru-sama.”_

_“Well, I show you. And you may use the laboratory to your preferences.”_

_“That’s very attentive. But I’m afraid, I won’t have any benefit of it.”_

_“Oh?”_

 

He wasn’t good at the theories, not yet. He had a natural comprehension for chakra and how to melt it in something healing, soothing. That didn’t mean he knew what he was doing at all.

And when one of Konoha’s legendary _Sannin_ , of all people the one who had a reputation as a scientific genius, offered to share his knowledge with him, in addition to saving his life—well, there really wasn’t been a possibility to say no.

Not that he would have wanted to say no.

Biology and chemistry, biochemistry, anatomy, applied physics, pharmaceutics, genetic research—the list was endless, and there seemed to be no field in which his _sensei_ didn’t at least have some basic knowledge, but mostly he did have profound expertise. Every time when he would show up to check on him, he would also spend some time to show him new basics. He would praise his talent and his quick-wittedness. And it really was fun. Kabuto already ran a few experiments on his own but also noodled around with some stuff Orochimaru had lain down for time reason, or because he had reached a dead-end. And it helped so marvellously to keep himself distracted.

 

_“You look exhausted,_ sensei _.”_

_“Ah, do I?”_

_“Things are complicated back in Konoha?”_

_“Mhm. But tutoring you brings me at ease.”_

 

Distraction from—

It seemed to be a win-win-situation. An arrangement that kept them both sane.

 

_“I shall be your superior, your brother, and your parent.”_

And it suited him, just too perfectly. And Orochimaru would raise that village not belonging to any nation, a place for the outcast, just like him, and it would become his family, would allow him to create the identity he didn’t have.

If only he could stop this train of thoughts and figure out, why his calculation went wrong.

Kabuto needed coffee. A big one.

He reached for the tin can with his chopsticks still sticking in before he got up to scuffle in the supply-room and the kitchen unit. His eyes fell upon the seal beside his papers when it started to glow with a soft _humm._ Kabuto frowned. Orochimaru was expected to come in around two weeks to check on him and his work.

He set down the can and activated a chakra scalpel, ready to either kill the intruder or to run and hide—depending on who it was.

He listened attentively, confused when he heard footsteps on the corridor that didn’t even try to hide themselves. Before he could reach the door of the laboratory, it flew open. Kabuto dismissed the scalpel at the sight of Orochimaru, but staid tense as he observed his _sensei’s_ appearance. His right side was stained in dried blood, it stuck to his hands and what he could see of his neck, splashed on his shoulders and arms. His hair was dull and sticky.

“Orochimaru-s—”

“Get your stuff, Kabuto. Everything _really_ important. You’ve got two minutes.”

Kabuto could’ve imagined that Orochimaru would’ve appreciated a faster reaction of him, but it was hard to tear his gaze away from his body. “You’re injured.”

“I cared for it already. You can check on me later.”

“The blood on your ha—”

“Not mine. Chop-chop, now! We’re in a hurry.”

Kabuto obeyed, hurled around and started to layer the research papers in the folder, snatched his supply bag, while Orochimaru sifted through the content of the shelves, eyes flying above the substances’ labels. They had to have some kind of fire accelerant, he was almost sure he had ordered some more—

ETHANOL

He took the bottles, one by one, “are you ready, Kabuto?” opened the first and started to empty it out on the floor.

“Hai, _sensei!_ ”

“Then make yourself useful.” He threw one bottle to the boy, he caught it, research folders too valuable to lose clamped under his arm, and copied him. Orochimaru spilled the ethanol across the worktables, on papers, scrolls, notebooks, records, logs, worked himself forward to the wall at the other side of the laboratory, while Kabuto took care of the shelves’ content and tossed a few more bottles with flammable substances to the ground.

Orochimaru came to stand in front of the pinboard on the wall. He took a second, reached under his jacket and brought a photograph to light. He hesitated just one moment, before he tucked the photo to the pinboard and formed a protection-seal around it. When he soaked the pinboard in ethanol, he tossed the last emptied bottle to the ground and closed up to Kabuto, who was already waiting at the door.

Orochimaru turned around and formed the hand signs, released a _katon_ and set the room in fire. Kabuto backed away from the radiating heat, and Orochimaru took his hand as he rushed through the corridor leading to the entrance, not looking back.

They didn’t stop outside. Instead, Orochimaru kept running, tucking the boy with him, deeper in the surrounding forest. Eventually, Orochimaru stopped between thick trees and released Kabuto’s hand. The boy was panting, didn’t have a _Jōnin’s_ stamina yet. He took off his glasses and cleaned them at the hem of his shirt, managed finally to catch his breath. “May I see your wounds? Please?”

Orochimaru was inclined to deny him his request, but common sense got the better of him. He sighed and pulled down his bloodstained waistcoat, sat down cross-legged on the forest floor and allowed Kabuto, who knelt in front of him, to examine him.

Skilled fingers pushed up the soaked shirt to uncover the bandage. Kabuto rummaged in his bag, until he got his instruments and started to cut the bandages down.

“Orochimaru-sama?”

“Yes?”

“What happened?”

Kabuto inspected the injury. It had been treated with some standard medical _jutsu_ , which he knew Orochimaru was capable of, but whatever had gotten him, it wasn’t enough to heal the greater damage which had been done. The flesh was sore, closed and patched roughly.

“Konoha’s bingo book will get a new entry, it seems.” He smiled bitterly and met Kabuto’s wary eyes. Green chakra glowed on his hands, which hovered gently upon his torn skin and flesh. “Don’t worry. That might be the perfect time to start our plans, don’t you think so?”

Kabuto smiled and adjusted his glasses. “I would love to.”

“Wonderful. Now, while you’re correcting my messy handiwork, would you let me have a look at what you have saved?”

Orochimaru flipped through the pages handed over to him, while he started to unbend under the effect of Kabuto’s chakra, loosening the thumping, dull pain until his flesh felt comfortably numb. He raised an eyebrow. “Are these my researches upon cell-renewal?”

“Uh, yes.”

He hummed acknowledging, while he went through Kabuto’s notes. “That’s quite good.”

“Really?!” The boy beamed up at him.

“Yes. For someone who couldn’t distinguish selenium from silicon not even a year ago, that is fairly impressive work, Kabuto.”

He huffed and pouted aggrieved, while he ended his treatment and applied new bandages.

Orochimaru laughed bemused and leaned forward to ruffle the boy’s silvery hair, before he rose and took on his vest again. “Let’s keep moving. We’ve still got a fair way to go.”

 

* * *

 

Sen crouched down on the ground, her hands stroking through the grass. He had been here. Footprints in the dirt. His, she recognized, and a smaller pair of feet. He did have company? The footsteps led from the laboratory a fair way through the woods toward north. They had rested here; she saw pressure marks on the ground. Then they had moved on, in a fast pace. She discovered some broken twigs, more uncovered footprints, crushed leaves.

Again, two possibilities: First—he had left the picture especially for her and it wasn’t a red herring. He didn’t have any reason to cover his trail from her, if he wanted her to follow. Of course, there was still the contingency, that another _shinobi_ would follow him. And since Orochimaru was almost more paranoid than she was, that led to the second possibility—the fight against Jiraiya, the break he had to make in order to treat his wounds, the stopover at the laboratory, where he had picked his little company, had eaten much enough time, that he was in need to recompense. There wasn’t left any room for track covering, when he had to run. And indeed, Sen doubted that Sarutobi wouldn’t have sent more hunters behind him. She didn’t even feel offended. If she would be in his position, she wouldn’t trust her at all.

How lucky for her to send him false information about her route. And that she took her time to cover her own tracks. Hah.

“Sen-san.” She heard the sound of rustling feathers and looked up as the raven landed in front of her, tipping a bit to stabilize itself. “Two humans, a man and a boy, a day’s journey from your position.”

“Did Rayko confirm the man as the snake summoner?” The raven nodded. “In which direction are they going?”

“Straight north. We inform you, if they change their course.”

The raven took off and flew away. Sen set down in the grass, thought it through. It was a trap. No way Orochimaru gave her a hint where he was going to and did actually _went_ there. And what was that with the kid? One of his experiments?

Well, Katsura Sen, famous spy of _Konohagakure no Sato_ , what are you going to do now?

Take the bait, it seemed.

 

* * *

 

“We rest here.”

Kabuto was used to endure hectic circumstances. To work intensely without enough sleep, hungry and thirsty. Nonetheless, he was a child, around the age of twelve, near thirteen. He was young, energetic, a little fireball. But he wasn’t able to keep up with the speed and endurance of a war veteran. Orochimaru would not have expected it, if circumstances would have allowed to go easier on the boy. So, when, eventually, exhaustion set in during the late hours of the following night, he didn’t want to ashame Kabuto.

“I want you to check on my injuries.”

Kabuto plopped down on Orochimaru’s side, lacking some of the fluid graze with which his _sensei_ sat down on the ground. He was exhausted, and when Kabuto recognized that Orochimaru had faked the rest, because the injury was perfectly fine, almost healed, he didn’t mention it but felt rather grateful for the break.

They shared some of the ration bars and food pills Kabuto had taken with them, while Orochimaru observed him, his composure, the tension in his shoulders. He shivered slightly and Orochimaru couldn’t blame him for that. For a summer night it was chilly, and the air smelled of rain. Orochimaru had learned to loathe rain during the second great war. He remembered he hadn’t cared much about rain when he was younger. But that rain in Ame had marked him. That damp cold, the moisture and soddenness. Their clothes never dried in those days. The blood on them, on their clothes, in their hair, on their skin was always wet, like freshly spilled. The dampness crept in his bones and refused to leave, even when they were able to light a fire. He remembered to have been so cold, and Tsunade’s hopeless attempt to prevent him from trembling violently as she wrapped an arm around his shoulders that didn’t help since his teammate had been as wet and cold as himself.

He hated the rain, since then. He had lost a friend to Rain. It had been absolutely bucketing down when he had to tell Tsunade about her brother’s death. And it had been raining that night Dan had died in Tsunade’s arms. It had rained when she left—he didn’t remember, but he was sure, because what other choice could the sky have made on a day like that? (Somehow, it was funny that Tsunade developed a haemophobia instead of some kind of rain panic.)

It was ironical that it had been such a nice night, when Sen decided to ditch him.

Orochimaru thought there had to be a reason why one says to leave somebody out in the rain.

Anyhow, both Orochimaru and Kabuto knew they couldn’t risk lighting a fire.

Orochimaru leaned against the tree in his back and tapped the ground at his side, motivating Kabuto to sit by him, while he let slip the combat vest from his shoulders.

Kabuto hesitated for a moment, but tiredness and physical discomfort were bigger than his shyness, and so he shifted nearer, until Orochimaru put the jacket around the boy’s too skinny shoulders and pulled him closer gently, wrapping an arm around him to keep him warm. Kabuto huddled up against his side, closing his eyes, just mumbling under his breath:

“Sentry?”

“I’m not tired.”, Orochimaru lied airily, and Kabuto was too sleepy to suss him. The boy’s breath melted into a smooth, mellow flow in an instant, and Orochimaru caught himself smiling satisfied. He squeezed Kabuto’s shoulder gently and felt the warmth of his small body against his.

It really was cold. And beside his eagerness to grant Kabuto a few hours of rest, he had to confess that he didn’t feel as fresh as a daisy himself.

Luckily, Orochimaru didn’t need both of his hands to call for his summons and so didn’t have to let go from Kabuto, when he summoned Tsujikone. The dark snake appeared in the grass in front of him, cresting his leg to upright itself upon his knee to look at him face to face. The yellow eyes of the snake gleamed in curiosity. His summons were used to be called in less pleasant situations and they didn’t ask questions, commonly. But when its eyes felt on Kabuto, excitement raised in those.

“Orochimaru-sama! Is that your hatchling?”

He chuckled softly at such an odd assumption. “No. I just take care of him.”

“It isn’t compulsory necessary to have laid eggs to accept a young as your own.”

“Is that so?”

“Of course! What is its name?”

“Kabuto.”

“Cute little one! Do you intend to have more hatchlings like it?”

“This conversation is getting strange, Tsujikone.”

The snake hissed and moved slightly to the side. “Well then, what do you need, Orochimaru-sama? It’s cold here.”

“You don’t say. See, I’m tired and we both need to rest. Would you be a dear and keep watch for me?”

“I think I could do that. For how long?”

“Three up to four hours would be marvellous.”

“And I’m allowed to eat whoever is getting near you?”

Orochimaru eyed the little snake warily. Tsujikone would grow to an impressive snake in the decades to come, maybe nearly as huge as Manda sometime. But now he would be impressed if Tsujikone would manage to eat a hare as a whole. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

Tsujikone hissed satisfied and slid down from his leg, floated like a liquid shadow in the grass and disappeared from his sight. Orochimaru leaned his head back against the tree. Four hours sounded like pure luxury. He closed his eyes, feeling the warmth radiating from Kabuto on his side, who slept like a log. They both had deserved some sleep.

He just hoped, it wouldn’t start to rain.

 

* * *

 

Sen awoke to the feeling of cold raindrops on her face.

She blinked the sleep away from her eyes, curled out of her coat and set out to move on. Her feet hurt, because her last tracking mission had been during the third war and she wasn’t used to run for long distances anymore, but she didn’t confirm it, even if the only person she could would be herself. She knew from experience, that after a few more days the pain would be gone and her feet would become numb to any discomfort. Sen thought, that she should be on an information procurement mission and not hunting her friend through in the woods. She thought about who would be her replacement. And how long she would still be away.

It was the fifth day of her hunt. And she had lost the trail.

Sen didn’t worry too much. Orochimaru went fast, yes, but whoever it was, who he had taken with him, they slowed him down and forced him to rest, even when the _Jōnin_ would have had the capacity in strength to keep going. Occasionally, she would find the remains of a small camp, a small fireplace, just big enough to heat something.

Small remainders, that she was still on the right track.

And then, at noon on the fifth day of the hunt, she reached the _Shūmatsu no Tani,_ the Valley of the End.

Sen stood at the river’s bank and looked at the other side. That was bad. If she would’ve been him, she would have walked along the river, _on_ the water, to avoid leaving a single track. He also could have crossed the borders of fire country above the valley. She huffed frustrated and kicked a stone in the river. Fuck.

Sen observed the ground; maybe he had been kind enough to leave her another hint. An arrow would’ve been nice.

She found something, but that was probably not for her. Thrown in the dirt, at Hashirama’s feet, laid a _hitai-ate_ of Konohagakure. She crouched down and considered it like an idiot, as if she could make out something of this.

“We can’t find him.” Sen looked up to watch Rayko, who sat on top of Hashirama’s foot. “The spoor is lost beyond the country’s borders.”

“How is that possible?”

“I’m not immune against _genjutsu,_ nor are my allies.”

She hummed thoughtfully and considered the possibility, that Orochimaru must’ve been starting to hide his tracks so thoroughly. He could have done it earlier, just after he left the photography. It wouldn’t have made any difference.

“Ok.”, she stood up, “the Land of Rice Paddies isn’t that big. It will take some time, but if he’s really there, he’s detectable.”

“Then I leave the rest to you, Sen.”

She nodded. “And you’ll have your payment as soon as I’m done.”

Rayko spread its wings and shook them out, before it dismissed itself in dark shadows and black feathers. Sen turned towards the river and took a step on the water, concentrated to find her balance upon the torrential tide. She walked across the river and reached the Land of Rice Paddies at the feet of Uchiha Madara. She looked back once, before disappearing in the forest’s side.

She walked for the rest of the day and rested after darkness fell, still in the same forest. She allowed herself to light a fire, just big enough to cook some water. While she drank her tea, she perused the file, once more. She knew the report nearly by heart by now. But she still didn’t understand.

Sen watched these pictures and didn’t understand at all. They had been friends for all these years, and if she knew anything about him, then it was his unhealthy curiosity. You could put a problem in front of him and be sure, he wouldn’t leave himself any peace until he would figure out, how to solve it. A disease spreading? Oh, he would find an antidote. After observing the symptoms, of course, despite all his qualities, he didn’t have much sympathy left—war does that to people—and watching others suffer wasn’t anything that did bother him much. He had seen worse on the battlefield, and to be honest, she had too. But torture didn’t fit him. And when she looked at these pictures, there wasn’t any other fitting description for what she saw: torture.

Sen knew, he was fond of kids. The more curious and intelligent, the more he would be taken in. His students adored him, the few he had ever taken. Children followed him like trusty puppies as soon as they lost their insecurity in front of him. And did it ever surprise anybody? Orochimaru treated children like small adults. They got what they wanted and had to deal with the consequences by themselves. School of hard knocks. Sen was awful with children, but even she knew, that children didn’t like to be treated like children.

And then she looked at those pictures and felt blind, raving rage inside of her. And she didn’t understand.

Why hadn’t he said anything? He knew she could find something to work against Danzō, she already did, so why didn’t he ask for her help? Pride? Or did it really not bother him, what he did have to do?

Was this the man she had been friends with; for years?

She didn’t understand him any longer, and she asked herself, when they stopped to know each other.

Sen wished she could pin everything on Danzō. It would be so much easier, if Orochimaru was just a victim of conspiracy, but she knew better. Orochimaru wouldn’t have conducted the experiments, if he had been against them.

She should distance herself from him. She should accept that she wasn’t following her friend, but hunting the accomplice of Shimura Danzō. She couldn’t. Perhaps taking a few more looks at these wonderful pictures would give her motivation.

She should distance herself from him, but still she couldn’t stop remembering that single sentence Danzō had spit at her. _“Born from the guilty conscience of a whore not able to hold back her toy boy.”_ Orochimaru and her had never been more than friends. They both weren’t even heterosexual. Orochimaru did pick his partners for sex as he wished, didn’t care for someone’s gender as long as the person woke his interest. And she preferred women far more than men. She would like to surrender to righteous anger, when faced with an old man’s mind, boggled by the fact, that a man and a woman were able to have a relationship beyond sexuality. She would really like to. And she didn’t want to curse that one afternoon when it happened, out of the nowhere, there it vanished again, an unique occurrence, but she did, thought herself weak and like she had taken advantage of him— _a whore and her toy boy_ —, even when it had been _him_ to make the attempt. But she hadn’t stopped him. She remembered his fingers on her face and the taste of his lips, and there hadn’t been a reason to stop. She did not respond to his kiss that other night, when he was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing—hopefully—but that one time in her apartment she had been weak. They had enjoyed it, they never talked about it, it never happened again, they had been fine. End of the story.

And yet it felt wrong. Because of that single accusation from a man, who knew _NOTHING_ about them. Us and them. That had been their credo; let them talk, it doesn’t matter, they can’t understand us. It felt like Danzō had taken that memory away from her and had tainted it. Like she wasn’t allowed to feel angry about his words, because they _had_ slept together, that one single time, and that lapse—she had never thought about it as a mistake before—smeared their friendship and exposed her powerless to his incriminations.

Sharp pain flashed through her hand and she looked up from the flames of her small campfire to her hand, clung around the tea cup, which was broken, shards of porcelain sinking in her flesh.

Sen growled and picked the shards out of her hand, dabbing blood and hot tea from it.

She would like to pick up her _biwa_ and play a few tunes to distract herself, but she knew it wouldn’t take long before she would play unconsciously one of Orochimaru’s favourite melodies, and that thought outraged her enough to let it be.

Why did she take all this stuff with her, anyway? She chuckled, dark and mirthless, to herself. There was still a possibility to go with him, wasn’t there? And she wanted to be prepared, for any circumstance. Sometimes, she really couldn’t stand herself.

 

_“Do you know why you are such a good liar? Because you don’t ever say the truth.”_

 

If you think too much, you get discovered. The more elaborated your lies are the more likely you get caught in them. That was basic training. Keep your lies as close to the truth as possible. But when every bit of information was supposed to become a weapon in your captors’ hands, the best would be to have no truth. Mind blank. No aims, no ambitions. No personality beyond the layers of masks and roles. They will tear them apart, peace by peace, until there is nothing left than your bare soul—she had been taken prisoner when she was young, she didn’t harbour illusions, she _knew_ that this was exactly what happened—; so better for you, your soul is _naked_ , doesn’t bear any secrets, any weaknesses. Be a hollow.

Like a ghost she sleepwalked/ somnambulated through her life. From one moment to the next, living for the day, _surviving_ the day. She didn’t know what to do, didn’t have any plan, how to deal with Orochimaru. Sen didn’t think about if she was able to betray him and give his position to the Hokage—probably; her training reached deeper than emotional bindings. And yet she was prepared to leave Konoha behind.

The night was restless, haunted by strange dreams. She was in Orochimaru’s house, but it was far larger than she remembered it. She heard small noises behind the walls, under the floor. He was nowhere, and when she teared open one wall, behind lay another room she never saw before, empty and dark, and the house, in which she felt so secure for years, was nothing than a skeleton, hidden chambers which contained nothing than dusk and dirt, and somehow the hidden rooms seemed more extensive than the house itself.

The Land of Rice Paddies was a nice place. Small mountain ranges on one side of which rice fields nestled up to, soft lines of hills, dabbed by thin shreds of fog. The streets alongside the rich farmlands were old but in good condition, leading serpentine through fields, woods, towns and hills. In every place she would go for the teahouse and ask for him. Mostly without result, but now and then someone would confirm, that they had seen a man with long black hair and unknown clan markings, accompanied by a boy with glasses and grey hair.

Glasses and grey hair.

Sen had been sure the boy was already dead. Since Orochimaru refused to retrieve him from ANBU- _ne_ she wasn’t sure if that wouldn’t have been a mercy. Why should he have changed his mind?

The hints leaded her up in the hills, far from the streets and in the woods again. The forests of the Land of Rice Paddies were different from those in Fire Country. Above the whole Land of Fire laid a carpet of thick, impenetrable leaves and branches, a shield of resilient wood. Here, the forests were fewer and more concentrated. Old trees, camphor and ginkgo, muku trees, agarwood and zelkova, ancient, spiralling up in the skies, bleeding a blanket of golden translucent, from the sun kissed leaves in the air. The air was thick with the scent of humid earth, old wood and rotten leaves. Grass and moss cushioned her steps and slurred every noise she made. But the forest wasn’t quiet.

It was sheer deafening.

Myriads of birds chirping and singing, cicadas and crickets clittering, frogs and toads croaking in nearby ponds feeding the trees. In the distance she was able to hear the squeaks of foxes, the hammering of peckers and—of course—the dark cry of ravens.

Sen hadn’t ever been in a forest so old before. It was fascinating. She walked for hours, the sun ascending and then again descending until the sky was afire of embers and honey. She had followed the noises to the heart of the wood. She stopped in front of the small cadaver laying on the earth.

A dead crow.

Sen kneeled down and looked at the bird, its wings spread, no obvious wounds. It had been prepared as it was lying there.

Sen reached out for the dead body and touched its feathers, out of curiosity, wanted to know how long it was dead, when fast movement appeared in the periphery of her vision and hot pain spread in—yes, again—her hand.

Confused, for a moment frozen in shock, she just stared at the two small stitches at the back of her hand. When she looked at the snake, disappearing fast and agile in the undergrowth, and felt pure horror.

It’s scales were white.

Sen pressed her lips against the small wound and sucked, she spit out the blood, but she already felt the tingling crawling beneath her skin up her arm to her shoulder. She gasped and needed all her long-trained mastery about her body to stay calm and not panick, to avoid the venom splaying even faster in her blood system.

She got to her feet. That whole new situation offered not two possibilities but rather two tangible information. First: Orochimaru was here. White snakes were far too rare to trail accidentally over her path. Second: If she didn’t find him immediately, she would die, probably. Oh, and there was third: That bastard had counted on her coming and had laid out that bait just for her.

_Moving, Katsura!_

She stumbled forward, all at once weak-kneed as her blood pressure was falling. The venom would cause cardiac arrest so, that meant it would at least not be a much gruesome death. How could she be so stupid? Two weeks in the wilds and she lost her mint already, picking at crow corpses; not even Cora was that much of a birdbrain!

She walked on a clearing, and there, beneath the huge roots, breaking through earth and raising above the forest’s ground and sinking in it again, laid the rooftop of an old ruin, embedded in the ground, old stone stairs leading down what seemed to be an old structure like an underground temple. Above the entrance was the effigy of a serpent.

Sen walked down the stairs, her hand sliding above the stone to her side in order to support her as she felt vertiginous. The chamber at the ground was old and ruinous, rubble on the floor, plants reclaiming that place, stone pieces broken out of the painted walls, which she observed with inherent curiosity. Images of _Yamata no Orochi_ , the eight-forked giant serpent. She would like to spent more time with these old images—old style, perhaps early Muromachi period—but she had a pretty clear feeling, that she would pass out every moment.

Sen cursed, turned around, her head was spinning, a throbbing pain in her throat, beating in unison with her heart, hard and painful. Her knees gave in and she fell down, broke her fall with the help of her arms, but she didn’t have the strength to go up on her feet again.

She breathed heavily. Like a rock on her chest. She felt sick, felt her body convulse dolorously, she opened her mouth and gagged, but out came nothing than a pained cry, tearing her body from the inside out— _no gruesome death? You are so pathetic, Katsura._

The last thing she noticed, when her vision got blurry and dark, shadows dancing across her eyes which she couldn’t blink away, was the sound of quiet footsteps approaching her.


	3. I won’t say what you want to hear

There was an awful surge of nausea churning her entrails and tearing her out from unconsciousness. A sharp pain in the crook of her arm and a soft hush, a calm voice—“you will be fine”—just darkness. She tensed her body, unaware how much time had passed, and was able to sense a few things; first of all, she sat upright. She moved her limbs and found, that her hands were bound on her back, and the frame of a chairback was pinching against her arms.

The sickness soared again, and Sen leaned forward and heaved without release. With a moan she reclined in the chair and let her head sink in her neck, lost almost every control about her body’s tension.

“Finally awake?”

Sen blinked until her eyes were able to focus. Instinctively, she pulled at the ropes restraining her hands. She scanned her surroundings—bare chamber, low-ceilinged, no windows, one door, possibly underground, no furniture except that chair and a small table on the other side—before she fixated her gaze on him. He leaned against that table, on its surface all her weapons and scrolls were spread meticulously; he didn’t wear the combat vest nor any other identifying marks of Konoha, and his dark shirt and uniform-trousers had seen better days. His hair and skin were freed from the traces of the last weeks, yet still exhaustion was written on his face, anger and tiredness clearly recognizable in his eyes. The smile playing on his lips was forced and there was nothing warm or kind on it.

“You look a sight.” Her voice made a rasping sound as if she had swallowed one of her crows. She tried to clear her throat which felt dry like the deserts of Wind Country.

He raised one eyebrow. “Did you look in the mirror?”

“Not in recent days.” She glimpsed to the table, then back at him. “I’m thirsty.”

Orochimaru took the glass of water she had recognized and stepped in front of her. He stared in her eyes, and Sen lifted her chin. He pressed the glass against her lips gently and let her drink, until she had emptied the glass. She breathed deeply. “Thanks.”

When he turned around, she tugged on her bonds again, smiling quietly. “Just like in good old days. I really thought we would be over such safety arrangements by now.”

“Nothing you shouldn’t be used to.” He pulled the glass with a silent klick on the tabletop. “Let us have a look into these scrolls, shall we? I’m curious what I’m going to find in them.”

“What do you think, you’ll find?”

“I don’t know. But I know that my girl is always well prepared. For any situation.”

“Your compliments still sound like insults.”

“That’s fitting. After all, I’m talking with the master of veiled intentions and double entendres, ain’t I?” He placed his hands on the table and looked down on the scrolls in front of him.

“I’m not quite sure, if that is fair. You wanted me to come, I’ve come. Just to get bitten by one of your snakes?”

He raised his head, lifted his gaze away from the scrolls, but didn’t turn around to her as he talked to the wall in front of him: “I gave command to silence everyone who comes near this place, yes. And when my summons wanted to know, if they should make an exception for you, I told them not to. Because we both know that you would’ve held all trumps in hand. I dare say you’ve offered your services in order to hunt me down, haven’t you?” He paused, as if he was expecting an answer. Explanation. Vindications. But he got nothing from her. “I never asked about the very moment of your final decision-making during missions, and _now_ I would be pleased to know, but I _don’t_.” He looked back down on the table. “So, I hope to find the answers in there. Because I can’t trust yours.”

“You’re aware that your story of events lacks a special incident?” She stared at his back, but didn’t get any further response. “The crow carcass. You didn’t just say to your sweethearts, that they shouldn’t spare me, you _directed_ that. Just for me. Or did you think, that birdbrain Aoba was at your heels? Little Uchiha Itachi?”

“Well, let me put it this way: I wanted to make sure, that I see you before you’re able to see me.”

“I promised to come with you.”

“Bullshit, Katsura!” His fist slammed on the table, his unusual loud voice silencing her immediately. Sen watched the tension in his shoulders, read his body language as he turned around to face her, and it didn’t take her by surprise to see that much fury in his eyes, carrying the graving wish to hurt her, to let her suffer for the betrayal she had done in his eyes. “I came to you and made myself vulnerable in the moment I asked you to come with me. I didn’t have any options but you, as always, had all possibilities you could wish for, and you were unwilling to let go of just one!”

Sen breathed in deeply and didn’t avoid his gaze, able to break men and women alike. She didn’t fear him. She probably should’ve, and a part of her was afraid of the things of which he was capable of—little bodies torn asunder, ruptured by needles, tubes—, but she couldn’t fear _him_. She knew him too well. Too long. Perhaps that did infuriate him even more, perhaps that was the only link still persisting between them. If she’d started to fear him, it would’ve been useless to talk. Everything would’ve been said by now. All over. He might’ve been testing her. Perhaps she made him so angry, that he would avoid killing her, before he felt satisfied for the hurt she did to him.

“Have you already made up your mind? Or are you still calculating, hm?” His eyes narrowed and he reached for the first scroll, opened and spread it on the table. “Let’s see. A second kunai pouch. Well, you won’t need those any longer.”

He tossed the scroll to the floor and Sen straightened in her bonds.

“Hey!”

“What, do you still plan to stub them in my back?” He reached for the second scroll, opened it and read through its content. “The bloody _biwa_. And your favourite tea service.”

“Along with my notes, clothes and a couple of books which I didn’t want to leave behind.”

“Hm. At least, you really considered leaving Konoha.”

“I would have taken your _Go_ -game with me, but I didn’t have enough time to collect all pieces. Your house wasn’t in the best shape, when I searched it.”

He sighed. “Ah, well. It’s a shame, isn’t it?” He took the next scroll, went through the content and unsealed it. “The only place in the whole village you would feel safe. Not even your flat provided you that much tranquillity, am I right?” He took one of the files, which she had taken from the archives, in his hands and turned around to face her. He leaned against the table in his back and started to flap through the content. “So much memories. So many reminders to all the things you’ve done.”

“Have a good look at it.”, she snarled. “And don’t overlook the photographs. I imagine that’s exactly what you had in mind back then, when you spoke about giving children a less gruesome fate than war.”

He looked up at her. “Since when do children bother you?”

She gritted her teeth and wrenched at the ropes. “I don’t have to like them to find your doing disgusting!”

“And still, it needed the home of who did that ‘disgusting’ things for you to find some hours of serene sleep.” He took one of the photos and took a closer look. “My presence to bring you any peace, when your past was hunting you. I wonder, Sen, did I ever judge you?”

“I regret what I’ve done!”

“And I refuse to!”

He approached her with one single step, harsh and fast, he leaned forward to her and hold the picture in front of her eyes. “Do you think I enjoyed any of that? You see this and think _you_ are able to _understand_ it? You weren’t there, you didn’t have to cut them open after they died, to understand why, you didn’t see their convulsing bodies any time, when you were absolutely sure that this time it had to work, that you finally found a child with capable cells! You didn’t talk to and examine them, didn’t have the security of flawless cell bindings for weeks before they started to die out of a sudden! Too less time, too many restrictions, too much distrust from everyone around you, and yes, Sen, the pressure, the guilt with every dying child whose deaths I couldn’t understand!”

Sen tried to avoid his gaze, tried not to look at the picture, but she couldn’t, couldn’t move her head away. She tried to sink down in the chair any further, wanted to escape so desperately, but he wouldn’t let her avert her eyes from the picture in front of her.

“You weren’t so upset about the improved soldier pills I made for you, hm? I saw them in your bag. And nobody in the village was shocked, when I found a way—with your help!—to make examinations and mind manipulations easier for T&I. The manipulation and extension of chakra systems, even the preservation of fucking corpses! Do you think any of these would have been possible without the resources of ANBU- _ne_? …Do you know just one of the children’s names, you’re so inconsolable about their ever so gruesome fate?” He stood up and tossed the file to the ground. “I don’t regret what I have done. That would make any of these deaths useless, would make every success hollow.”

“Did they scream, Orochimaru?”

He slapped her with enough force to yank her head aside. She licked her lips and tasted blood. Sen smiled and leaned to the side to spit it to the floor. “I’m sure they have. While you assured them, that it won’t hurt.”

Orochimaru crouched down in front of her and looked up into her eyes, a disgusting expression of malignance in his. “Probably not more than that child, which you have manipulated, cried over their parents’ death, caused by your plotting. Or the Kazekage’s niece, who adored you like a sister, while you were married to her cousin, before she had to learn, that you were a traitor, just a spy playing another role like any else. Or that young girl you have killed once to save your identity.”

“That young girl might have died faster than Yuki has. She was a fragile one, wasn’t she?” Sen saw the grin on Orochimaru’s features freezing as she named one of the children. “Unlike that boy with the red hair, Rikimaru, right? I think he was promising. I imagine how you ruffled his hair to assure him, before you sedated him. But I think there wasn’t much difference between the kids when it comes to dying.”

Sen watched the rage growing in his gaze and prepared for his next hit, when he finally lost his temper and beat her so hard that the chair tipped over. With a painful moan and gasp she landed hard on her back, the wooden chairback digging into her backbone. She tried to catch her breath, while Orochimaru rose up over her, grasping at her collar to tear her up; he didn’t recognize, that her bonds had been loosened as she hung slackly in his hand, dazed by his hit. He was too angry, too taken away by the wish to wreak his rage upon her, for everything. Nobody else was able to bring him that far, to push him to the limit—not Jiraiya, not Tsunade, but her—she, who had promised him, in the middle of Konoha’s streets, not to leave him—she would pay for it.

He lunged forward, her hand snapped upwards and caught his fist, her gaze met his and he saw vicious joy in her eyes—

Orochimaru let go of her to dodge the knee directed at his privates. Sen let herself fall to the floor and pushed her legs upwards to strike at him again to keep the distance between them, used the momentum of her attack to flip over and land on her feet again.

“You know”, she said smiling amiably, “after you tied me up, back then, I learned a few new tricks.” She skipped a few more steps away from him and wiped the blood from her lips. With a grin she beckoned him over.

Orochimaru’s eyes narrowed, while he searched for a better footing and eased his posture. With an exhale he dashed to her and with fast movements aimed for her chest, her throat, and her forehead. Sen parried his strokes, blocked a kick with her knee, another with her forearm, feeling soon that she was losing ground. Orochimaru was faster than her, his movements liquid and of deadly precision. The logical part of her knew that she couldn’t stand against him for long; but they both needed the fight.

Sen felt the wall in her back and dropped to her knees, avoiding a blow aimed for her head, and with three quick strokes she hit one of Orochimaru’s chakra points before moving out of his reach. He gasped and felt his left leg getting numb, he turned around, let himself collapse against the wall in his back now and formed the handseals for _sen’ei jashu_ , stretching his arm in Sen’s direction, whose wide, manic grin crumpled on her face when forced to dodge the dark serpents dashing at her from Orochimaru’s sleeve. She jumped up, tossed her legs up and bended her back, for a moment horizontally in the air and spun across Orochimaru’s attack, landing on her feet, he retrieved the snakes and dismissed them with one smooth movement of his arm, before lunging for her.

Sen realised too late, that she wasn’t the only one playing tricks, Orochimaru’s leg wasn’t as numb as it seemed to be, she hissed, sucked air between her teeth and raised her hands across her face to dodge his attack, punched at his shoulder, but didn’t hit the sensible spot underneath the shoulder joint but the solid bone as Orochimaru recognized her aim and moved his arm ever so slightly to weaken her attack. She tried to pursue her attack, he blocked her, startled her footing with a fast blow against her defence, and in a too fast movement he grasped her arm and tossed her with a turn of his body over his shoulder. Sen damped her fall and rolled over her back on her feet again, but he was already at her side, aiming strokes against her in quick succession, attacking her defence without cease, until he finally hit her solar plexus.

She coughed, staggered backwards before she made impact with the wall in her back, and Orochimaru’s hand grabbed her throat and slammed her back against the old stone.

“We have to make one thing clear, Sen.”, he hissed, pulling her forward just to push her against the wall again, with enough force to wrest all air from her lungs. Sen whimpered. “Never— _never_ leave me again!”

Sen didn’t struggle. Didn’t clap her hands to his wrists to loosen his grip, didn’t kick at him, didn’t plead. She just tried _to breathe_ when he cut the air from her lungs, tried to hold her eyes open, looking straight in his gaze, furious, mad and hurt, not denying the irate fire in his ophidian eyes. He pierced through her core, looking, waiting for the slightest wisp of betrayal, but then her body slacked in his hold, her head rolled back and her eyes closed, a suffocated wheeze pressing from her lungs, and he froze, staring at her and eased his gripe on her throat, not fully, to avoid her toppling to her knees.

“What—?”

“I won’t fight you”, her voice was nothing but a whisper, just a breeze of nothingness touching his senses with the slightest breath like fingertips. “If you want to kill me, then do it. I’m not saying what I think you want to hear.”

He stared at her, intrigued by her even in her weakest moment; though this was a fraud, a scheme to deceive his mind, for he knew her. He never saw her weak, not even in her darkest hours, proud enough to hide her pain and agony and stand against it, holding up when everything in her wants to drown. She was broken, but never weak. There was a difference.

His fingers enclosed around her throat, and Sen closed her eyes, opened her mouth to breath, and Orochimaru gritted his teeth, because he was unable to bring himself to kill her. Sen wouldn’t make any promises; and he would never pretend to be someone else. “Neither will I apologize nor regret.”

His grip eased and Sen opened her eyes, when she took in a deep breath. In the weeks of her hunt for him she had always went through the same thoughts haunting her mind and dreams: how to forget. But in all these weeks, from the moment of genuine shock, when she saw the pictures of torn up bodies of children, she had forgotten one important thing—and the author as well, who has searched for a solution, how this distracted situation between Sen and Orochimaru is to solve—: there isn’t any forgetting needed; neither any forgiveness. Sen’s body count might be lower than his. But she also might have forgotten, that her methods were many things but certainly not ethical. Her past was paved with unnecessary gruesome deaths. Sen wasn’t a hero, and she never pretended to be one. She might have regretted a few things, but that didn’t stop her in her doings. Once Orochimaru had accused her to enjoy her power over other’s fate, and he had been right. She did enjoy the Hokage’s praise, who thought the world of her work. She enjoyed Orochimaru’s affinity, not alone because he wasn’t judging her, but for his admiration for the things she did. It was easy to persuade herself, that his crimes outweighed hers, but that wasn’t true, and Sen, for all intents and purposes, knew it.

The truth was, that they both deserved each other.

They were equals, two criminals on the run, with blood on their hands, with excuses on their minds and the knowledge, that they both would do again what they have done. Sen had tried to leave all doors open, as always, because she would never change, and so she wouldn’t promise, that she won’t put again her safety over his. But now she also accepted, that there wasn’t any other door left for her than that leading on the same path which he had already taken. There never was another one, in the first place.

They deserved each other. And therefore, all the troubles that come along with them.

Sen nodded slightly in agreement to his last words, to confirm, that she won’t expect anything else. Orochimaru released her throat and lowered his arm, and Sen leaned against the wall and breathed freely and relieved.

“Then tell me now: What else have you done to cause me more trouble?”

She smirked, while looking in his serious, still pissed face. “For all your intelligence, sometimes you’re such an idiot, darling.”

He raised an eyebrow, leaning forward slightly and supported himself against the wall with his hand next to her face. “What am I supposed to make of that?”

“That I’ve reported, you’re heading east. Weeks ago.”

He watched her attentively, searching for anything, that could give away another lie. But he saw just that glee in her eyes, as if she did succeed in playing a quite dirty trick on him.

She had made up her mind weeks ago, and he now seemed to be the idiot for not trusting her.

“Bitch.”

“Likewise.”

They stared at each other for another moment, and then Orochimaru kissed her.

Sen startled and turned her head to the side, tried to shove him away, and he caught her lips again, pressed his against hers, forcing him onto her, with the weight of his body against hers, capturing her lips in a hungry, greedy embrace, biting down on her lips, feeling her defence, again she turned away her face, rose her hand to slap him, he grasped her chin and moved her head back to face him. She growled, slapped his face again, he caught her hand this time, and then Sen kissed him back, harshly, without any tenderness. She forced her tongue into his mouth, demanding his, he gave her in, grabbed her waist and turned with her to pull her back to the table. He sat her on top, catching her lips again, and Sen relished in his taste, the smell of his skin and hair, the soft touch of his silky strands, in which she curled her fingers.

Sen felt utterly lust for him, the tension between them melting in something lesser deadly but still pregnant with the desire to make up for every sorrow, pain and fury of the last weeks, for all the troubles they both caused for each other. His kisses were hungry, she responded to their soft structure and his bites, she hadn’t realised, how much she actually _missed_ him, she relished the feeling of his body between her thighs, she—

_“I’m curious, how you want to prove your accusations, obviously born from the guilty conscience of a whore, unable to hold back her toy boy.”_

—slapped him again to stop his body from reacting to hers, but he mistook her doing for foreplay—he knew her simply too well—, uttered a growl and tightened his grip on her waist.

He wanted to catch her lips again, but then she pressed her hand against his chest and shoved him away, her shoulders convulsed, and she leaned forward to retch.

Orochimaru stood back and lifted his hands to signal her, that he would leave her alone, before he finally took the syringe from the table. “I give you another dose of antidote.” Sen nodded quietly and swallowed hard, while he filled the syringe. She gave her arm to him, which he turned to lay the needle in the crook of her arm. He smirked, while he gave her the injection. “You’ve come and gone in my home for years and you haven’t got bitten once.”

“It’s not like they haven’t tried.”

He chuckled amused and put the syringe by side. “Since you’re not accustomed to snake poison, you should rest a bit.”

“Do you have a corner for me to sleep?”

He smirked and offered her a hand. “I show you around.”


End file.
